Interdisciplinary Center Calls for Innovators

Notre Dame College is creating the Enterprise Development Center, to be called EDC@NDC, on campus with funding awarded from the Cleveland Foundation.

Over the next two years, the $150,000 Fenn Educational Fund grant will help create more than 100 paid, on-campus internship experiences for Notre Dame students in all majors, while supporting more than 40 high- and low-tech startups and small businesses.

Students and startups can apply online at NotreDameCollege.edu/edc.

Over a dozen community partners and startup accelerators, including Jumpstart, Bizdom and FlashStarts, wrote letters in support of the program and said they would refer clients to the student experiential learning initiative.

The interns will work and learn side-by-side with both commercial and social entrepreneurs to study innovative thinking and help successfully start, scale and sustain business ventures—while contributing to the economic development of Northeast Ohio.

Long-term goals for the project include for 50 percent of the students involved to be non-business majors, for 50 percent of the students involved to be women and for 50 percent of the overall student population to participate in at least one activity of the center.